A Luminous Mind: John Dolphin AllenWhen: April 17, 2009Where: Dallas Museum of Nature and Science

John Allen, aka Johnny Dolphin, author of the recently released Me and the Biospheres: A Memoir by the Inventor of Biosphere 2, the definitive autobiography of one of the most luminous minds of our time, will speak and perform Friday, April 17 at 8 p.m. at the Museum of Nature & Science, 1318 Second Avenue in Dallas’ Fair Park. Tickets are $15 general admission, $10 students and members of Wordspace and Museum of Nature & Science. Call 254-495-9976. This event is sponsored in part by the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs.

Johnny Dolphin is the nom de plume of John Allen–an explorer, author, poet, playwright, scientist and heroic guru of the avant-garde. He has authored dozens of scientific articles, many books of poetry, prose, and plays, including The Dream and Drink of Freedom and 39 Blows on a Gone Trumpet, taught hundreds of actors, and performed all over the world. His latest book, Me and the Biospheres is an awe-inspiring glimpse into a luminous mind and his project-by-project chronicle of man’s potential to sustain the environment while interfacing it with art.

Born and raised in Oklahoma, he left a successful post-Harvard career in New York in the early 1960s to live in the Tangiers art scene then ventured through the secret back trails of war-torn Vietnam and Tibet. He began meeting the people who partnered his creation of Synergia Ranch, the Theater of All Possibilities and his historic environmental and cultural projects. He is the inventor of Biosphere 2, co-creator of the RV Heraclitus Planet Water Expedition, Rainforest Enrichment and Sustainable Forestry Project (Puerto Rico), Pastoral Regeneration Project (West Australia), The October Gallery (London), Les Marrionniers (France), Institute of Eco Technics and Caravan of Dreams (FW).

His conferences and collaborations on culture and science include such diverse members of the world’s intelligentsia as Timothy Leary, the Panchen Lama, William Burroughs, Ralph Metzer, Yvgeny Yevtushenko, Buckminster Fuller and Ed Bass, He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Linnean Society, and the Royal Geographical Society.